Technology was not part of the everyday world in the 1950s and 1960s. Our phone was attached to the wall. We had a party line. No celebration was involved. Several people shared the same line.
If you wanted to make a call, and someone else was busy discussing how terrible a neighbor looked with hair the color of an orange cat, you could interrupt or wait. Neither was a good choice.
When I needed to write a school paper, I went to the library and rummaged through the card catalogue. One row of drawers next to another. If the subject wasn’t boring, this task was!
The librarian found the research book I needed via the information on the card. Then I copied what I needed along with the reference onto my notebook.
Sometimes, the material was available in the World Book Encyclopedia. Our family bought a set from a door-to-door salesman. The series contained anything you wanted to know about aardvarks to zippers, provided you didn’t need in-depth information.
Typing the final result made Atlas’s job of carrying the Earth appear easy. I started with a manual typewriter. A sheet of carbon paper was placed between the original and the copy. Since the backspace didn’t provide an eraser, either the entire page needed to be retyped or the error needed to be covered with a white blob cover-up.
Erasable paper eventually came onto the scene. However, it smudged. And, of course, the biggest mistakes appeared at the bottom of the page. I didn’t keep track of the time needed to complete one five-page assignment. On my father’s Royal typewriter. In a basement corner.
It was a royal pain. The advantage? Only one I can see. I sure learned discipline. And gratitude.When the task was completed. Eventually.
Swollen, toxic, ignorant of motherhood, you lie in your post-World War hospital bed, and wonder if you’ve heard lies. How can a newborn, untouched by her life source, be fine?
You see, hear, touch, smell nothing but bleached sheets and ward antiseptics. The baby develops away from you in a nursery. You return home. Without her, cord leaked into your severed womb.
At home, baby grows fed on evaporated milk and rules made of rules. Should-be’s without question. The child reaches for you, to break the barrier, but not until long after she delivers your grandson.
Does the touch feel real? By then your weakness has led to the inevitable.
Your great-granddaughter finds your photo in an old album. “That’s my mother,” your daughter says. “You would have loved her.” The chasm finally closes. For no good reason at all.
Two Canada geese settle into an angled parking space in a Wal-Mart lot. They take turns sharing shreds of bun left in a torn red McDonald’s box. One goose eats. The other stands watch for danger.
A car honks, its sound louder than any a goose could create. The noise interrupts their feast. Harsh and threatening human voices follow. The geese flee.
From their aerial perspective the birds agree— Excellent volume. Lacks style.
Please, this is a request not to be limited by a form or definition. Let these words fit more than structure. Let someone, somewhere, speak and another listen. And the word pass along from…
ear to heart. If peace happens in the middle of a sentence, let there be no criticism that the form was imperfect. At night, if a dream…
appears, after too many hours of news, and your presence results in families fed because you offered them food even though you didn’t know their names, backgrounds, or addresses. You know nothing about them.
Come, waken. See the poor and the hungry in places five or six miles away. Open your pantry. Find what is excess for you, yet another tomorrow for a neighbor. We can become hope for tomorrow for them,
essential for change, a better world. Inside more than an acrostic of exactly 150 words.
Everyone knows my name, face, and products. I appear on screens across the world. Wealth and I speak a coded language, encrypted inside green and silver. Luxury touches every corner of my existence. I touch no one. Distance keeps profits safe.
Then, for fun, I bet my associate, “If I walk through one of my factories in a central state and someone recognizes me, another layoff is possible. The workers are not watching what they are doing.”
I did.One of the older men on the line almost ran into me.
“Geesh, do you know who that is?” another man whispered. He was loud as thunder. “Quiet, Jake, his son was laid off last time around. He couldn’t feed eight kids no more. His baby died last week.”
I finished my check without adequate detail. I will send someone from my staff for the next inspection. Workers need to watch where they are going.
terrypetersen 